A Privileged Kind of Precarity: Fighting Prejudice with Pride
For me, post-graduate precarity presents itself through uncertainty and insecurity surrounding my identity. I was 18 years old when I first started to question and consider my regional identity: “I didn’t know Northerners went to uni”, a peer said to me, after a seminar during my first term at university.
I hadn’t ever given my status as a ‘Northerner’ much thought, not out of ignorance to my background, but rather the opposite. I was unaware of other people’s apparent ignorance. At the time, I didn’t give much thought to this comment, but since being greeted with similar statements, I’ve come to realise that many people aren’t referring to ‘Northerners’ at all – they are referring to ‘the working class’. I’ve heard these two terms being used interchangeably in day-to-day speak. Two things that still don’t appear synonymous are the working class and university. Of course people from working class backgrounds attend university (I wouldn’t be writing this if they didn’t) but at university I became painfully aware that this aspect of my identity was repeatedly greeted with surprise.
Last year I enrolled on a school-centred initial teacher training course to begin my career as an English teacher. In the academic reference provided for me, one of my professors highlighted my deviance from a traditional ‘Russell Group’ background in terms of my regionality and schooling. This comment was never intended as derogatory, but rather served as a rationale for my ‘understanding’ of the journey involved in gaining self-confidence. By no means is this a criticism of said professor – who remained a constant source of support and inspiration throughout my studies, and to whom I owe a great deal – I’m simply haunted by the realities underpinning that statement.
Why, because of the education of my parents, or my home in Greater Manchester, should my confidence or academic journey be judged differently to those of others?
Why is my success in education in some way deemed a greater achievement than that of my peers, or more surprising? I suppose the real question I was left with was this: why does my background lead me to be underestimated? I have found one answer in my study of language and literature, during which I became attuned to literary voices, as well as to the sound of my own. After having my accent impersonated, mocked, and pronunciation ‘corrected’ by my Southern and middle-class peers, the Lancashire dialect of my working-class town became deafening in my ears: a marker which singled me out. Among the predominantly middle-class crowd that surrounded me, I found no accent, outlook, or likeness to the experiences of the people and place I call home. However, as my studies drew to a close, I realised it wasn’t the people, place, or prestige which I found alienating, but the privilege and prospects I now held as a result of university study.
In graduating from university, I felt pride and happiness in my achievement. At the same time, I felt a distance from my family far greater than the 350-plus miles that lie between my home town and university campus. As I reflect on my accomplishments and opportunities, it’s impossible to overlook the people and places along the way. It’s impossible to ignore home.
Since university, however, home no longer feels like home, rather a liminal space between the past and present. In this space, I find my precarity – a sort of muted isolation from those at home with whom I no longer hold a shared experience.
Like hundreds of small towns up and down the country, my hometown lies in a forgotten pocket which offers little to no opportunity for its residents. Whilst it was this very lack of opportunity which propelled me to apply to university, it is the lack of working-class representation in university education which serves as the driving force that guides me back home to my roots. Along this journey back home lies a new-found appreciation for the sacrifices of those before me, who ensured I wasn’t denied the same opportunities that they were. This business of family far surpasses the family-business of university study I saw plague so many of the more advantaged students around me. Many attended university precisely because their mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters did (rather than because they themselves passionately wanted to).
However, whilst I have come to understand that the geography of this country sadly dictates opportunity, my own journey with precarity has emphasised a greater truth: experience does not dictate aspiration, and only ignorance dictates your underestimation of others, or indeed yourself.
